Unfortunately, democracy also produces its disappeared people. The practice of disappearing people was not restricted to the years of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes in different parts of Latin America in the second half of the 20th century. Indifference or complacency on the part of societies only explains how the transition from dictatorships to democratic regimes was made in societies shattered and fractured in their traumas, where each group carries its pain, memories and wounds.
In Argentina, where the figure of the missing person causes commotion due to the 30.000 people who disappeared during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983), a new case of disappearance shakes the country. Young Santiago Maldonado, 28, disappeared after a protest on August 01st. Santiago was participating in a demonstration by the Mapuche community in the province of Chubut, in Argentine Patagonia. The indigenous people claim the lands sold by the Argentine government in the 1990s to the Benetton group.
Maldonado was last seen during the police crackdown on the August protest. Since then, the country has been asking a single question: where is Santiago Maldonado? The national police and official bodies spread the idea that he had fled to Patagonia or even been murdered in a dispute between those protesting. The official version is contradicted by evidence and other reports from witnesses who claim that Maldonado was taken in a van and even entered the police station. The Gendarmería, a national police force responsible for internal order and combating terrorism, would be responsible for Maldonado's capture and would have the necessary information to clarify the episode. But the official silence is as uncomfortable as the possible outcome of the story.
“Appearance alive. They took them alive, we want them alive.”
The theme resonates in Argentina and revives well-known aspects of that country. Those disappeared by the military dictatorship belong to a more complex explanatory framework than counting the dead. In front of a body there is a mourning that is experienced and solidarity is awakened in a specific circle. Disappearances, as important studies such as those by Pilar Calveiro and Ludmila da Silva Catela point out, break a logical structure of human beings who are born, build their trajectories and die.
With the disappearance there remains an unknown and the pain of family, friends and people close to them increases as they try to piece together explanations and, above all, survive with the pain of never getting an answer to find out what actually happened. The suspicions, the ambiguous messages that were issued in a context of censorship and publicity about the repression actions amplified the suffering of those who were left without news about the people who disappeared. The dictatorship acted like this.
Maldonado's status as the last missing person recalls the unthinkable terror practiced and sponsored by the State. The most painful sensations that refer to personal and collective experiences of grandparents, fathers and mothers, daughters, sons and friends who never had accurate information about their loved ones. Vindicating Santiago Maldonado, with the same slogan from the 1980s that opens this section, expresses the duty of memory and the appeal of Argentine society that no one should remain indifferent in the face of a disappearance.
The unrest in the streets, the public protests and the media attention demonstrate that the silence and fear intended by the dictatorship did not muzzle the entire Argentine society. It can be said that, in a sweetened reading, Argentines are more mobilized and do not let their recent history be forgotten. At a closer look, it can be said that the pain is so strong, intense and harshly experienced that it is practically impossible to silence oneself.
Maldonado's disappearance is unacceptable given the fact itself and given the perspective that a citizen cannot disappear in a State body. This same State must inform, present evidence about what happened or about the whereabouts of the boy who lived making tattoos and selling handicrafts in Patagonia.
The dictatorship systematized disappearance as a primary repressive practice of the State. Democracy has not extinguished practices that express the abuse of authority and, above all, action against subjects and groups that the State would like to see disappear. Unwanted subjects can “disappear” and State agents – from the police officer to the President of the Republic – ignore the demands of Argentine society, its main public figures and international public opinion.
Santiago, the 43 of Ayotzinapa and Amarildo
The experience of violence and attacks by the repressive forces of the State are legacies of everyday authoritarianism and which persist in democracy. The Latin American 21st century brings with it the coexistence and collusion of certain groups with expressions of power that are not guided by republican and democratic principles. Torture, kidnapping, political assassination, mechanisms for approaching the peripheral population and the “unwanted” are continuous practices.
There is no such thing as the disappearance of Maldonado (2017), that of construction assistant Amarildo, in Rio de Janeiro (2013) – which was clarified in a lengthy process, but his body was never found – and in the case of the 43 young Mexican students of Ayotzinapa (Mexico, 2014) no additional effort to clarify, punish and prevent. The State, preserving its authoritarian practices, has no commitment to transparency and punishment of its agents. Life, at this moment and without any subterfuge, is a banal fact and societies remain defenseless in the face of the experience of violence.
That dictatorships and their repressive apparatuses have created abominable mechanisms must be remembered and constantly denounced. That democracies imitate such procedures is, at the very least, an indication that Latin American societies are going through a moment of turmoil. And, in this context and in no other, it is not up to us just to criticize the past.
Apresentation of the group La Eulogia at the Encuentro Nacional de Músicos, in Rosário. The question “Where are they? What can you tell us?” is part of the composition “Todavía cantamos”, by Victor Heredia. At the end, the posters and the warning about forced disappearance in democracy.
